


salvation

by owedbetter



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Confessional, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owedbetter/pseuds/owedbetter
Summary: “Is there anything left of me that can be saved, Father?”
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 68





	salvation

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Easter, kids. My brain would not let me write literally anything else except this (which is how a lot of my fics get posted/finished, to be honest). This was fun.

" _Whom have I in heaven but You?_  
 _And earth has nothing I desire besides You._ "

\- Psalm 73:25

* * *

It was Saturday morning.

Half-past six in the morning on a Saturday. And no, she hasn’t slept.

"May God, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in His mercy."

She looked at you and smiled like she shouldn’t be here.

> ( _I know._ _I know I shouldn’t be here._ )
> 
> ( _But hi._ )

The confessional hasn’t been open long but the light was on — a “the priest is in” sign — and she hadn’t thought this through. She wasn’t drunk but she had been drinking.

> ( _Yeah, I know._ )

Even to you, she found herself whispering. She rolled her eyes.

> ( _Don’t look at me like that._ )
> 
> ( _It’s been a while, how did you even find—_ )

She stopped.

> ( _You don’t know—_ )

She bit her tongue. Looked at you for a split second, could see just the kind of look you were giving her with that smirk on your face, knowing exactly where she was and what was about to happen. 

> ( _Shut up._ )

She couldn’t sleep.

She bounced her leg and clenched her jaw, lips pressed too tightly together. She breathed in and glanced to the side. She could only barely see the outline of his profile, the shape of his nose.

“Are you okay in there?” he asked. “It’s okay, you can take your time. Take all the time you like, it’s no problem. I just don’t usually get people in this early andand—” he sounded nervous, like he could tell it was her, but there was no way he did. “—and I can’t really start with the whole thing until—”

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said. She looked at you as she cringed at the sound of her own voice. “Or was it _bless_ me... Father?” Managed to breathe out a laugh without the joy of one. “I don’t really remember.”

It was quiet then. The kind of quiet you can only get in a room with people who knew each other but weren’t speaking with each other, and air. A buzzing, ringing, heavy kind of quiet. She swallowed. She wasn’t sure if he was breathing. Her breaths didn’t make a sound.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he said finally.

She looked at you and raised an eyebrow.

> ( _Right, here we go._ ) 

“Oh, _fuck_ you.” 

It wasn’t a one-syllable “fuck”. 

It was the kind of fuck that was prolonged, staccato, and sounded like a breathless song. He didn’t sound upset. She could hear the smile in it and it made her smile. But it was the kind of “fuck” that a less experienced writer might have added a few extra vowels to, just to make a point. But this one already didn’t know the difference between en and em dashes, couldn’t quite keep up with what tenses she was using in the same paragraph, and didn’t really know where to stop putting in commas and just put in a new sentence, so fuck it, you were just going to get an extra paragraph instead that she thought, at the time, might be clever, but will probably end up regretting ever putting in.

> ( _She’s thinking of deleting it._ )
> 
> ( _She won’t though._ )
> 
> ( _Now she’s thinking of the people she knows are going to read this and thinking she’s a bit pretentious and a bit shit, which she is, and you’re all wondering what the fuck is going on, why is this bit necessary because it isn’t, but really this is just to emphasise that it’s taking him a really, really long fucking time to say any—_ )

“Thought I told you you’re not allowed here.”

She wasn’t making it up now. She could hear the smile in him and through the thin wall between them, she could just barely make out the look of his face. He wasn’t looking at her, he didn’t need to. But she could see that dimple, that exasperated little grin.

“I know but what are you going to do, have me thrown out?” she joked. “Call security?”

“I could call Pam,” he said. “Just have Pam chuck you out.”

“And what’ll that look like—a church that turns people away?”

“A church.” 

She laughed.

“Fair point,” she said. “Do you... want me to leave?”

“You’re already here,” he said. 

She looked at you.

> ( _Doesn’t answer the question._ )

“Just fucking get on with it,” he continued.

“I…” she started. She looked at you, wide-eyed and mouth wide open. “I don’t know, really, I just… I... well, I—”

“How are you?” he asked.

“I…” ( _Really fucking lonely._ ) “I don’t know. You?”

“Heard your cafe is doing well?” he said. She noticed him avoiding the question and you did too.

“You hear about me, Father?”

“I—well, no—it’s more like—” he stammered. “You hear guinea pig cafe, my ears just kind of perk up, you know?”

> ( _He’s been keeping track._ )

“I haven’t been keeping track.” 

She made a face. ( _Liar._ )

“You’re just… really fucking inconvenient.”

“So are you.”

“How’s the—the, um—the sister? Claire?”

“Good,” she said. “She’s good. She’s really good.” 

> ( _She is._ ) 

“She sends me postcards instead of actual letters because they’ve got pictures on them. I hang them up in a little corkboard at the cafe. It’s cute,” she said. “Her boyfriend’s nice. They fuck a lot. He tells me so. And he’s not even pervy about it. He just really fucking loves my sister. Loves fucking my sister. Don’t think she’d ever known she can cum more than once at a time but there you go. I don’t know how he manages to not be creepy about it but it’s quite nice.” She paused. Looked at you and bit her lip. The way she was smiling was starting to hurt. 

“I think he’s going to ask her to marry him soon. It’d be about time.” 

“Your… parents?”

“Fine, I think,” she replied. “They’ve been in the new house in France for a while now, so—” 

> ( _My, ugh, stepmother? No. Godmother? Godmother. Stepgodmother. Jesus. Anyway, she’s gone and brought dad over to the south of France for their second honeymoon slash artist’s retreat. For… a while. The sexhibition lost traction after the second year on tour and I’m pretty sure dad wants to get a divorce. I try not to think about that too much._ )
> 
> ( _There’s—well, there’s just a little part of me that’s kind of worried that they’re never going to come back now. You know, just, get rid of the memories of the old house. Old family. Old life. Chain him to the attic before he can try to leave, like some kind of—_ )

“You’ve gone away again.”

> ( _Shit._ )

"I've missed that, actually," he said.

“Sorry. Right,” she said, tucking hair behind her ear. “Forgot you cou—well, not really but you know… yeah, sorry, anyway, dad doesn’t really write. Or call. Or… anything. I don’t—I don’t really mind but, you know, I assume he’s fine.”

“How long has it been?” he asked. “S-since your last—” she heard him swallow “—confession?”

“You tell me,” she dared. ( _Haha, I know exactly when._ ) “You’re the nerd, you’ve fucking counted. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

“I haven’t.” ( _Lie_.) “Okay, I have.” She grinned. “What sins... have you come here… to confess for—fuck, I don’t know, absolution?”

“I… what, I’m sorry?”

“Exactly. Yeah, that,” he asked. “What are you sorry for?”

“Uh…” she trailed. “Pride, I think. I don’t really know what you call it.”

“What have you been proud about?”

“I, well—nothing much,” she said. “If you listen to my godmother, there’s not much about me I can be proud of. And she’d be right, of course. I just run a cafe, really, and it’s not much but—” Big breath. “I’m in love.”

“Oh,” he said. She bobbed her head mindlessly, knowing he wasn’t quite done. He was processing. It was fine. He could take his time. “Congratulations?”

She laughed. “Fuck off.” 

“Tell me about him,” he said.

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

“No,” he replied. “But fuck it.”

“Well, he’s… he’s charming. And... funny. Amazing sex. And he listens, which is nice, but you know—he calls me out on my shit, which I also like. Makes for even better sex.” 

“That’s nice. That-that’s—that’s good for you.”

“Problem is, he’s still a priest and I’m pretty sure he’s an alcoholic but, you know, he’s—he’s warm so I can deal with that.”

He whispered her name then. He rarely did, back when she knew him, except when he did and it was glorious. There was something in his tone that she could not name. If there was a word for what it sounded like to say: _don’t, don’t do this._

> ( _But fuck it, I’m doing it._ )

“And I remember that he makes me laugh like nothing else and he makes it easy to breathe, like the air around him is lighter or some bullshit like that but it does, and I fucking love him. I really fucking loved him, I loved him, I _love_ him—” she went on. You can figure out at which point her voice decided to break, when the tears began to flow—just know that they didn’t stop once she started. And she just kept going. 

“I thought _that_ was the worst part but—ha, the worst part is... he loved me too.” 

A pause.

“I don’t—I don’t really know why he would but I—he did. And I’ve been looking for home my whole broken, stupid life and I—I _had_ that when he loved me. I _had_ it and it didn’t feel like peace; it felt like salvation,” she said. “So when he tells me that he—he loves someone else more, I have to wonder what it is about me that… what do I have to do to be… fucking I don’t know, better than God?”

“Darling, it doesn’t work like that.” His voice was quiet and she hated it.

“I have tried, you know. My business is doing fucking amazing and it’s peaceful in my stupid, amazing life and really fucking quiet but I’m still just so—Jesus, okay, I’ve done the fucking silent retreat and took it seriously to fucking find myself or spiritual nirvana or whatever you call it or something, I did. I _did_ that. And I got fucking diagnosed with severe depression ‘cause I kept seeing my therapist, and I’d just spent two weeks in Finland with my sister and her boyfriend, and we went to the fucking husky park and it was fucking delightful, and got pulled through the snow in a forest on Christmas by fucking reindeer, and had the absolute time of my life and it was fucking magical and wonderful, it was so good, it was so, so good and then I came back here hating everything, like nothing good ever happened, because what’s the point of coming home to an empty bed? 

And I think my bed still smells like him even though I’ve washed my sheets more times than I can count. And I’ve fucked around—oh my God, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I’ve _fucked_ —and tried to not fucking wash my sheets—which was absolutely disgusting and repulsive by the way, I know—but it still feels like him, it still weirdly smells like him, and every fuck is still him. I can’t go to M&S anymore, I can’t have gin, I can’t—I’ve dated, I have six different dating apps on my phone, and I’ve tried to fucking put myself out there and do what everyone tells me to do and thinks I should be doing to get over this. And I’ve done my research and considered going to a fucking convent and see what’s so fucking good about God. I’ve written in journals, I’ve done open mics about fucking a priest and falling in love with a priest, and the act’s all fucking good and hilarious until I go home and it’s not an act anymore and it’s never been an act and I’m still alone because nothing, _nothing_ feels like home. And it hurts. Christ, it fucking hurts.”

She looked up, then. The light of morning was peering through the wood. Her breathing had gotten loud and the air felt too heavy to keep in, so she kept trying to push it out.

“He told me it would pass and it hasn’t. And I have this godawful... horrible, _horrible_ feeling that it won’t.”

“Loving him was knowing God, Father. Because knowing you—” ( _Fuck. Fuck off._ ) “ _He_ loved me too… this is hell. And hell isn’t something you fucking pass through, you’re just stuck here—hell is knowing exactly what heaven feels like, and spending the rest of your fucking life not having it because he didn’t pick me because of God so yes, I’m looking for some goddamn absolution. That’s the point of this, right? Confess and get that fucking salvation to get me out of here because it’s been two years and five months and thirteen days and it hasn’t stopped no matter what I do and I’m fucking thirty-six years old and this is really, really fucking pathetic that I’m still not over it and I’m so _fucking_ tired and so tired of being lonely and alone, so please, fucking tell me how to make it stop.”

A pause. Quiet, heavier than before.

“Is there anything left of me that can be saved, Father?” she asked finally. “Because it’s like you took anything good I had left in me when you left.”

“Have you considered that… that giving you up is…” he started. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve— _he’s_ ever had to do. That maybe he’s not heaven because he’s not perfect, he’s not paradise, he’s—he’s a fucking alcoholic, his family life is a fucking mess, he doesn’t have anything to fucking offer you, and there’s a massive fucking load of shit you haven’t even begun to unearth. There’s so, so, so much more than the things he’s given up; there’s all the fucking fucked up things he’s running away from, and turning from the—from God is… fuck it, I can’t-I can’t do this.”

He made a sound like a laugh without mirth.

“I’ve never been good at your kind of life, love, I have to say,” he said. “Where you wake up and just figure things out, that’s not me. In this life, I just follow a template of service. I know what’s expected of me and what the hell I’m supposed to do. There’s _literally_ a fucking rule book. And there’s an outline and I just have to colour in and most days, I don’t even know how shading works, and—this is a really stupid fucking metaphor, I don’t even know, I just—I have something safe here. Peaceful. And you’ve come around and ruined it but it’s still a life that’s easy and good like nothing in my life ever has ever been and I’m a coward for it, yes. And sure, it’s really fucking lonely but it’s _God_.” 

He paused then and swallowed. “I think about you every day, though.”

That made her smile. She closed her eyes and looked down.

“I never imagined a life where I get old. Never wanted it. Was fucking petrified of the idea. Like I would have literally rather died than be saggy and disgusting and achey and slow and creaking and not hot. God fucking forbid. Planned on killing myself before I ever turn 40 or something bleak like that,” she confessed. “But... I dreamt of growing old when I was with you if you could believe that. When I woke up next to you. And I liked it.” 

“I remember.”

“No fucking idea how that would work, really. Think quite a lot of myself to think you wouldn’t be sick of me after the first year of really knowing me and what a colossal fucking mess I really am, but, you know... I’d dream we’d make it. I’d dream that it’d be hard as shit but we could do it. And I loved you so much, I wanted to try.”

“Darling, I can’t just turn my back on—”

“I never asked you to give up God.”

“What do you want?”

She grit her teeth.

“A life... the rest of mine with you,” she said. “I don’t mind sharing with God—”

“I could never share you—”

“And I have all this love leftover,” she said. “For my mother. For Boo. For you.”

“Boo?”

“She’s my friend,” she said. “She’s dead now. I never got to tell you about her.”

“Oh,” was all he could say. “She opened the cafe with you.” 

It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” she said. “I told her about this before. This feeling. And I… I don’t know where to put it. And don’t say some shit like give it to myself because—just… I. Just don’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay then… suppose I can’t tell you to just do ten hail marys and you’ll be sorted.”

She shut her eyes tight, tilted, her head up, and willed her body to keep the tears in. There was nothing left to cry out.

“No, I suppose not,” she said weakly. “I’ll—I’ll leave. I’m sorry I came by, I know I shouldn’t have.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “But it’s okay.” 

She got up.

“It was good to see—” he started.

“I love you,” she said. “Still.”

“I love you too,” he told her. “Always.”

“I—” 

She stood there for a moment, by the door, head turned to him as if waiting for him to say anything else. But he wasn’t going to say anything else.

> ( _He’s not going to say anything else._ )

“Okay,” she said. 

She left, footsteps quick against the hallowed ground. Her hands tried to wipe the runny, yesterday’s mascara that had trailed down her face. She looked at you. She knew what you were hoping for, she knew what you thought was going to happen because what was the point of breaking her heart twice over the same thing? 

> ( _I know what you’re thinking._ )

She was out of the Church building. She didn’t hear him leave the confessional but she looked back anyway. She turned back to you, still briskly walking. 

> ( _It’s not going to happen._ )
> 
> ( _I know you’re thinking he’s going to run out of there and run to me._ )
> 
> ( _Beg me to take him back or something dramatic._ )
> 
> ( _I know what this is. A fix-it, you call it._ )

She turned back to the church.

> ( _Not happening._ )

She turned back again.

> ( _It’s not happening._ )

* * *

It was a few hours later that same Saturday.

She’d just given a customer a scone in a bag and some tea to go. A few minutes shy of closing. It was very nearly empty in the cafe now.

“Enjoy. Thanks very much,” she told them as they left.

She looked at you then, again.

> ( _It’s really not happening, is it?_ )
> 
> ( _He’s not going to turn up._ )
> 
> ( _He’s not going to knock on the door and fuck me on my bed. Against my front door. By the sofa. Arse up with my hands on my bathtub. On my kitchen floor. Literally anywhere._ )
> 
> ( _I really shouldn't think about him like that right now. Or at all. Ever again. Stop it.)_
> 
> ( _Maybe I should text—get fucked up the arsehole just to feel something._ )
> 
> ( _The lawyer?_ ) 
> 
> ( _Nah, no. Not worth it._ )
> 
> ( _I’m just going to go wank myself to sleep. Or cry. Probably both._ )
> 
> ( _At the same time._ )
> 
> ( _Yep._ )

When suddenly, the door opened and the bell rang with it.

She looked at the door—and then at you.


End file.
